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This weekend, 12 states across the nation will be celebrating sales tax holidays. In total, 16 states will hold a designated weekend in August for suspending sales tax on qualifying retail purchases. This number doesn’t include the state of Massachusetts; the Massachusetts state legislature has recently approved a sales tax holiday and is just awaiting the governor’s signature.

So what exactly is a sales tax holiday? It’s a set of days where the state will not levy sales tax on any retail purchases that fit the state’s guidelines. To be clear, however, you could still be charged a sales tax levied by a local municipality or county.

August sales tax holidays are supposedly to lessen the pain of the back to school spending tab for parents. In reality, however, many non-school essentials are included in state’s qualified purchases list and any shoppers, regardless of age or educational status, can benefit from the sales tax cut.

If you’re a beginner to the sales tax holiday game, though, you might be surprised how easy it is to lose your sales tax savings. Here’s a quick overview of the most common ways customers make mistakes during sales tax holidays.

Overbuying

The classic money trap of sales tax holidays (or any shopping trip) is overbuying. Consumers visit stores with the goal of buying, not browsing, in mind and are willing to spend. Black Friday sales are a perfect example of this trend – shoppers get lured into stores with deal promises, then end up buying quite a few full priced items once they’re in store.

Remember that your savings will quickly disappear if you buy more than you intended. Sales tax in most states falls between 4 – 8%, so while the appeal of getting a pair of jeans on the state sounds wonderful, do the math and realize you’d have to spend $500 tax-free, assuming 5% rate, to get a “free” pair of $25 jeans.

As usual, don’t buy what you will never use and won’t enjoy. The best way to make use of the sales tax weekend is simply to delay any purchases you may have been planning for a week or two beforehand and buy those items during the holiday.

Bad Math

Sales tax holidays inevitably produce a collective amnesia amongst us Americans. We simply forget that sales tax is only around 4 – 8% of the purchase price. You’ll never see a 5% off sale advertised on primetime TV, or on the first page of a retailer ad circular, or blasted to you in a store email. Saving $5 off a $100 pair of shoes wouldn’t make you jump at the chance if you saw the deal advertised in-store, so why should you be chomping at the bit now?

Sales tax irks us because we hate paying that 5% on mostly everything we buy, but unfortunately saving that 5% back one weekend a year doesn’t really lift your pocketbook all that much.

Remember that you’ll only be saving 5% per item when you consider driving across a state border or getting a hotel for a night in a holiday-participating state. In most cases, the gas or hotel cost will eliminate your sales tax savings.

Skipping the Fine Print

Be careful with item restrictions and price caps during your state’s sales tax holiday. State to state, there’s significant variation as to what types of items are tax exempt and which categories of items are not. For example, Louisiana includes “most items of tangible personal property” in its sales tax holiday, but Iowa only includes clothing in its holiday and does not exempt school supplies. Most states fall somewhere in between, exempting essentials such as clothing and school supplies.

Even within these item categories, exemptions often don’t make sense. In Virginia, which provides item-level clarification on the category of clothing, safety glasses and goggles – which could come in handy in a high school lab – are not exempt from sales tax, but diapers and bibs are exempt.

Make sure to check item price caps, too. Most states will only exempt tax on an item if that item also falls under a certain price point.

Read the original article on NerdWallet. Copyright 2013. Follow NerdWallet on Twitter.